Peak Farmland?

More land for nature in our future

â€œHumanity now stands at Peak Farmland, and the 21st century will see release of vast areas of land, hundreds of millions of hectares, more than twice the area of France for nature,â€ declared Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, in a December lecture. Ausubel was outlining the findings in a new study he and his collaborators had done in the Population and Development Review. Unlike other alleged resource â€œpeaks,â€ peak farmland reflects not the exhaustion of resources but the fruits of human intelligence and growing affluence.

The trend toward reducing farmingâ€™s impact on nature took off with the Green Revolution of the 1960s. That leap in agricultural productivity was sparked by plant breeder Norman Borlaug and his colleagues, who created new high-yield varieties of wheat and rice, an effort so successful that Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

While Borlaug was working to avert famines, others were declaring them inevitable. â€œThe battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo faminesâ€"hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now,â€ the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich declared in his 1968 dystopian screed, The Population Bomb. The epicenter of Ehrlichâ€™s alarm was impoverished India.

In 1960 Indiaâ€™s population was 450 million, and the average Indian subsisted on a near-starvation diet of just more than 2,000 calories per day. Indian farmers wrested those meager calories from 161 million hectares (400 million acres) of farmland, an area a bit more than twice the size of Texas. By 2010, Indian population rose by more than two and half times, national income rose 15-fold, and the average Indian ate a sixth more calories. The amount of land devoted to crops rose about 5 percent to 170 million hectares. Had wheat productivity remained the same that it was in 1960, Ausubel and his colleagues calculate that Indian farmers would have had to plow up an additional 65 million hectares of land. Instead, as people left the land for cities, Indian forests expanded by 15 million hectaresâ€"bigger than the area of Iowa.

The trajectory of rising agricultural productivity was similar in post-Mao China. Chinaâ€™s population doubled, and its GDP rose 45-fold. While the amount of land harvested for corn in China also doubled, each acre produced 4.5 times more than it did in 1960. Ausubel and his colleagues calculate that rising Chinese corn productivity spared 120 million hectares (an area more than twice the size of Texas) that would otherwise have been plowed up. The United Nationsâ€™ Food and Agriculture Organization reports that Chinese forests expanded 30 percent between 1990 and 2010.

In the United States, corn production grew 17-fold between 1860 and 2010, yet more land was planted in corn in 1925 than in 2010. (The area planted in corn has started increasing again, thanks to the federal governmentâ€™s biofuels mandates and subsidies.) Today U.S. forests cover about 72 percent of the area that was forested in 1630. Forest area stabilized in the early 20th century, and the extent of U.S. forests began increasing in the second half of the 20th century.

Credit: earthdotcom

If global crop yields had remained stuck at 1960 levels, Ausubel noted in his lecture, farmers around the world â€œwould have needed about 3 billion more hectares, about the sum of the USA, Canada, and China or almost twice South America.â€ Plowing down this amount of the worldâ€™s remaining forests and grasslands would have produced what Ausubel calls â€œSkinhead Earth.â€

What about the future? The researchers offer a 50-year forecast via their ImPACT equation, which calculates how much land will be used for crops (Im) by multiplying population trends (P), affluence (A) as GDP per capita, consumption (C) as calories per GDP, and technology (T). The United Nations expects population growth to continue to slow, global affluence to increase at around 1.5 percent per year, people to spend relatively less on food as their incomes rise (Engelâ€™s law), and the amount of crop per each hectare to rise by 2 percent annually. (In aggregate, farmers today can produce nearly three times the food they did in 1960 on the same amount of land.) The authors also take into account the growing global desire for meat, which means growing more grains to feed animals, and the diversion of crops into other non-food products such as biofuels.

Currently, American corn farmers average about 180 bushels per acre, and the world average is around 82 bushels per acre. The authors assume a modest 1.7 percent per year increase in corn yields between 2010 and 2060, which implies that â€œthe average global yield in 2060 would resemble the average U.S. yield in 2010.â€

One concern is that farmers may be approaching the biological limits of photosynthesis, which would constrain crop yields. But the authors note that the winners of the annual National Corn Yield Contest currently produce non-irrigated yields of around 300 bushels per acre, nearly double average U.S. yields. Ausubel suggests that the difference between the global average of 82 bushels and contest-winning 300 bushels per acre yields means that â€œmuch headroom remains for farmers to lift yields.â€

Cranking various population, economic growth, and yield trends through the ImPACT equation, the authors conservatively conclude that in 2060 â€œsome 146 million hectares could be restored to Nature, an area equal to one and half times the size of Egypt, two and half times France, or ten times Iowa.â€ Under a slightly more optimistic scenarioâ€"one where population growth slows a bit more, people choose to eat somewhat less meat, agricultural productivity is modestly higher, and thereâ€™s less demand for biofuelsâ€"would spare an additional 256 million hectares from the plow. That would mean nearly 400 million hectares restored to nature but 2060, an area nearly double the size of the United States east of the Mississippi River.

As Ausubel notes, sparing land usually also means sparing water, which would lessen pressure on the worldâ€™s fresh water supplies. Crops need nitrogen to grow, but excess nitrogen fertilizer running off fields pollutes streams and is responsible for algal blooms that produce low-oxygen dead zones in many coastal regions. Researchers are hard at work on producing biotech varieties that need far less nitrogen.

Efforts to dramatically boost the photosynthetic efficiency of staple grain crops are moving forward, prompting optimistic conjectures that â€œfarmers could grow wheat and rice in hotter, dryer environments with less fertilizer, while possibly increasing yields by half.â€ Currently about 40 percent of the worldâ€™s grain is fed to livestock to produce meat. In the ultimate move toward what Ausubel calls â€œlandless agriculture,â€ the biotech company Modern Meadows hopes to use tissue engineering and 3D printers to make meat. Obviously, such breakthroughs would free up even more land.

â€œNow we are confident,â€ the authors conclude, â€œthat we stand on the peak of cropland use, gazing at a wide expanse of land that will be spared for nature.â€ Now thatâ€™s a real Green Revolution!

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…I don’t get why people can benefit so much from something and still piss all over it.

People spend a lot of time and energy convincing themselves of counter-factual positions because it fits some larger conceived Narrative.

in this case, the Narrative is, “The increased Corporatization of Agriculture is a) Destroying the Earth, and b) Poisoning Human Beings with Synthetic Chemicals and Cancer-Causing Bioengineered Organisms.”

When you point out that a) Modern Food Production is *far more* positive for the environment than historical, ‘traditional’ inefficient farming, and that b) Organic food and production methods provide ZERO benefits either for human health or the environment (and may arguably be significantly worse)… they are forced to turn you into a Corrupted Deluded Partisan Fool who is a Tool of the Evil Corporations = either you’re LYING or you are fooled by Lies and Fake Science which is HIDING THE TRUTH.

meaning, a disproportionate reaction to your perfectly legitimate case is to be expected – they dont need to argue the position anymore (because facts rarely support their ideas), they need to DESTROY YOU as a creature that is inconsistent with their preferred narrative.

“meaning, a disproportionate reaction to your perfectly legitimate case is to be expected – they dont need to argue the position anymore (because facts rarely support their ideas), they need to DESTROY YOU as a creature that is inconsistent with their preferred narrative.”

My father-in-law would fit the bill nicely there and, as a retired member of the Operating Engineer’s union collecting disability after barely surviving cancer, is the perfect tool to drum up voter sympathy. I’ve just gotta figure out a way to leverage this into a gig at big-Ag to juice my future inheritance.

I suspect “peak farmland” won’t bring back the vast grasslands of CA’s Central Valley where grizzly bear, tule elk, antelope, and gray wolves once thrived — the Serengeti of the West as it was described.

A shame that the humble native living with the cycles of seasons became the hunted target of genocide.

“Har har.” No, it takes one who can identify one to know one. Try Diamond’s riff on qwerty keyboards in “Guns, Germs and Steel”; it’s a centerpiece to his supposed critique of market forces. It’s a shame he didn’t realize the claim had been debunked several years earlier. He’s a lefty post-mosaic preacher, and he cares only about that religion.

Looking in the book, qwerty is used as an example of how vested interests affect whether societies adopt tech or not. Another example is Britain’s use of gas lighting til 1920 because municipal gov’t had invested in gas and regulated electric companies out of competition.

“Reads more like a critique of cronyism, not market forces.” Uh, that is a *very* sympathetic read. Especially from one who proposes the Central Valley be turned over to grizzlies and wolves. Are you surprised I’m calling bullshit?

It’s not a sympathetic read. Nowhere in “Guns, Germs and Steel” does it say that we still use qwerty keyboards because of the failure of “market forces”. We adopt a technology, and it becomes habitual. Habits are hard to break, IOW.

Take a look-see at how Beverly Hills liberals use their clout to high jack a publicly funded water storage system.

the Kern County Water Bank is an underground reservoir in the hottest, driest, southernmost edge of the Central Valley with a capacity of 1 million acre-feet, enough to convert the entire state of Rhode Island into a swampland one-foot deep or supply the City of Los Angeles with water for 1.7 years…During wet years, it would serve as a repository for excess water coming in from Northern California and the Sierras, and pumped out in dry years. California spent nearly a hundred million dollars to develop the underground reservoir and connect it to the state’s public canals and aqueducts, but in 1995, California’s Department of Water Resources suddenly, and without any public debate, transferred it to a handful of corporate interests.

“Nowhere in “Guns, Germs and Steel” does it say that we still use qwerty keyboards because of the failure of “market forces”.”

P248 of the 2005 edition: “The vested interests of hundreds of millions of QWERTY typists, typing teachers, typewriter and computer salespeople, and manufacturers have crushed all moves toward keyboard efficiency fo over 60-(sic)years.” You Are Full Of Shit. Is that clear? ————————– “Because vested interests affect society. That’s croynism, isn’t it?” No, it’s simply that new products have to show an advantage worth the cost of the change.

“Hunters and gatherers are not corrupt. Didn’t you ever watch the movie “The Emerald Forest” or “Avatar”?” and: “Oh, I see where you’re wrong. You confuse the law of diminishing returns with comparative advantagement scales. Do you see now?”

OK, that’s FUNNY stuff. Who’s pulling the sock here? Too funny to be anything other than that. Avatar reference; is it you, sloopy?

Jason S.| 3.23.13 @ 11:21PM |# “No, I’m not a sock puppet.” OK, so you’re an ignoramus. So far you’ve offered all sorts of ‘well, the world might end if…” without a shred of evidence. So, again, what in hell is you point?

Water from the Delta serves 25 million Californians and 3 million acres of farmland from San Jose to San Diego. This water demand has contributed to the collapse of numerous fish species in the Delta, the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas.

In total, the plan seeks to restore 57 imperiled native wildlife species, 11 of which are fish. Others include the Swainson’s hawk and sandhill crane, birds that will benefit from specific types of habitat restoration.

“We’re talking about a restoration potentially observable from space,” said Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Oh yeah, you’re right. It says that socialist and communist soil has remained healthy, vigorous and productive, while western industrialized soil has become a barren and rocky place where seeds can find no purchase.

Yet another example of why Berkeley and Oakland’s urban community gardens are thought of as a vision of what tomorrow’s healthy society will look like.

JeremyR| 3.22.13 @ 8:18PM |# “Drive across the country sometime. We are nowhere near peak farmland.” Did you read the article? Driving across the country wouldn’t tell you a thing about whether we are at peak farmland or not.

“How does this fit the libertarian world view?” I’d rather there weren’t state funding involved. Are you suggesting we should all revert to gamboling because ag research has state funding? What is your point?

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Something not noted in the calculations presented is the effect of the rise in CO2 ppm that everyone is going batshit insane over these days. We’re barely experiencing 395ppm (a historically LOW number), and IIRC, since someone mentioned UC Davis AG research, they ran testing a few years back that upping the PPM of CO2 to around 9-1200 ppm yielded lima beans (the test subjects) twice as large and in less time than the ambient 380 or so. If true across the board (and it does work with pot also, btw), wouldn’t that just piss the luddites and hysterical Gore-bots right the fuck off?

“I’m patient, and it’ll be worth the wait.” The danger, of course, is that we humans have no alternative ‘home’, so anything that made this one toxic is bad news. That danger is clearly offset by the history of humanity adapting to various climates even when that adaptation meant nothing more than more of the bear-skins you mention up-thread. Climate change? We got an ap for that.

This whole article is based on a false premise: That Borlaug’s methods are sustainable. In fact, they are not.

The “Green Revolution” is anything but. Currently we use 10 calories of fossil hydrocarbons for every calorie of food we produce. Synthetic fertilizer, plastic sheeting, petrochemical pesticides, fuels and lubricants for the tractors, harvesters, trucks and coal for the electric power generation that powers the lights and refrigerators at the grocery stores. This is the real reason for our “success” in agriculture. We are using fossil fuels at a rate never imagined. All energy is solar energy, when you think about it. We should be in “solar balance”, yet we use SEVEN YEARS worth of stored solar energy in fossil fuel, EVERY DAY. Food production is responsible for the largest share of that.

Borlaug promoted a kind of game of Russian roulette against nature, ruthlessly killing every living being on the farm, except the one crop he was interested in. Pitting ever stronger pesticides and other methods trying to outmaneuver nature. It is a game destined to fail catastrophically.

The only sustainable model is Permaculture (a kind of food forest). Similar to what the American Indians did, before we “civilized” them.

Borlaug was an environmental barbarian.

Reason should stop being a blind mouthpiece in support of raw capitalism and really analyse every article before publication.

Tman| 3.23.13 @ 1:49AM |# “Why are fat people in Seattle so whiny? Is it the rain?”

Dunno, but why are they so full of shit. Look here: “This whole article is based on a false premise: That Borlaug’s methods are sustainable. In fact, they are not.” This idiot can’t understand English, or is being willfully ignorant, I’m not sure which.

I feel there is an immense level of denial here. I am not making any controversial points. However, no one seems to acknowledge any of them. For example, the last time the US produced as much oil as it used, was 1971. And the rest of the world is not doing much better, the last world discoveries in excess of use, were in the 1980’s. Since then, no major fields have been discovered, and they are not likely to be. Our food supply depends completely on petroleum. By promoting unsustainable methods, Borlaug took an obscene risk with the most vital human activity: food production.

We have to stop blindly believing what is convenient and pay attention to what is really going on. Truth is not “leftie” or “righty” it just is.

Look, you’re full of shit, you’ve been called on it. The only “denial” is your idiotic attachment to Malthusiaism. Go peddle your silly religion elsewhere; everyone here has heard it many times and it’s been wrong an equal number of times.

And the rest of the world is not doing much better, the last world discoveries in excess of use, were in the 1980’s. Since then, no major fields have been discovered, and they are not likely to be.

North Dakota says your wrong about that. You do realize the state is in the middle of a huge oil boom and that they are producing far more oil than they are using, correct? And that the Bakken oil fields boom started in 2008?

By promoting unsustainable methods, Borlaug took an obscene risk with the most vital human activity: food production.

So you have dropped out of society, bought a farm and started subsistence level farming, right?

Because if it’s really as big a looming catastrophe as you make it out to be, then that’s the logical thing to do. If you haven’t done any kind of personal preparation, then maybe your dire warnings are just so much hyperbole?

No it doesn’t. It relies on energy. It just so happens that the cheapest method available today is fossil fuels, but if peak oil is a reality, that will change. No biggie, though, since we’ve got 80 years of uranium and 300 years of thorium left. If we haven’t figured out how to harvest direct solar energy cheaply in 400 years(!) I’ll give you a nod. Until then, you’re just another luddite.

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What is even funnier is hearing the AGW crowd try to explain 16 years of no warming. And that is not all. Try getting a believer in AWG to show proof of the positive feedback (doubling of CO2 only gets a 1 degree increase in temperature) for the projected increase in temperature. It’s like an Easter egg hunt without any eggs!

What’s even funnier is hearing an alarmist crow about Reason’s “overt political agenda”.

I believe the objective science surrounding global warming, namely, that it’s happening at a significantly slower rate than the alarmists predictions and that it’s likely to have either only slightly negative or positive impact on human life.

until I saw the check 4 $6936, I didn’t believe that my father in law was realie earning money part-time on their computer.. there aunt had bean doing this less than eighteen months and at present repaid the depts on there mini mansion and got a great Infiniti. this is where I went, http://www.wow92.com

If you think Marvin`s story is impossible,, 5 weeks ago my boyfriend basically also made $7683 grafting eighteen hours a week from home and they’re buddy’s sister-in-law`s neighbour was doing this for seven months and errned more than $7683 parttime from a labtop. applie the information available on this page… http://www.fly38.com

my friend’s mother makes $65/hour on the computer. She has been out of a job for eight months but last month her pay was $15949 just working on the computer for a few hours. Go to this web site and read more http://googlejobs.com.qr.net/kgzE

We live in a time when there have never been so many malnourished people. Almost a billion, over 10% of the world’s population are malnourished according to UN figures. We also live at a time when food supplies have never been so high. The world produces enough food to feed everyone and several billion more, besides.

3D printers and landless agriculture are not the answer to feeding the hungry. Maldistribution of food is a political and economic problem. Throughout the Green Revolution food production has doubled and doubled again, and yet today there have never been so many malnourished.

“Researchers are hard at work on producing biotech varieties that need far less nitrogen.”

Why not just stop using chemical fertilizers and pesticides and instead just take care of the soil. My uncle’s farm, which he inherited from his father has never used any chemicals and would be what we’d call organic today I suppose, but he doesn’t need any nitrogen fertilizer because he rotates crops, uses cover crops and doesn’t kill nitrogen producing organisms in the soil with pesticides. The mainstream of farming in this country spends a fortune (all those subsidies they get offset that) and then they shoot themselves in the foot and need to spend even more (or grovel at the government for more subsidies).

I would like to be as optimistic as your article. Unfortunately, the rates of productivity improvement in agriculture in the technologically advanced agricultural countries of North America, Western Europe and Australasia are declining. Improvement in yields for many crops have plateaued. GMOs have not proven to be the technological godsend that we hoped for. Check the track record of delivery for these innovations against investment.

It is a race between population and income growth in the world on one hand and the ability of lower productivity agricultural countries to catch up with the technological frontier of the technologically advanced agricultural world.

Even if this should happen I am pessimistic that we can meet the food demand of 2050 with the consequent political and policy problems for lower income people especially in lower income countries.